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Monday, 3 August 2015

New mind mapping workflow is
added in this Android patch 1.8.0. This workflow is to simplify the
creation of mind map. You can create a mind map by choosing the mind
map option when creating a new file.

To begin, you start by
drawing your central idea shape and then type in the central idea
immediately afterward. From the central idea, you can simply draw
out branches any way you want either with straight, curve, or
multi-step lines.

It is easier to edit
branches looks and feels by redrawing the connector line again. For
example, drawing a straight line on a curved connector will act as a
quick replacement command. You can re-route children node by
simply selecting the start point of the connector and drag it to
other parent node. Finally, to draw link between existing nodes you
can just draw line connecting them.

Here are some additional
mind map specific controls

The current implementation
is still in beta stage as it is still missing some advance mind
mapping features such as auto layout, more styling option, mindmap
format, and more. Please help us improve them by sending your
suggestions to support@drawexpress.com

Wednesday, 4 February 2015

This is still in beta phase as I am still figuring out the
rest of the workflow.This patch
provides a quick way for you to start a high level design of your app/web
interface.It is meant to keep it simple
so it doesn’t have any of the interactive stuffs that you would get from some
other prototyping apps.

To begin wireframe, you must drag one of the wireframe
elements from the shape library.The
wireframe element behaves similar to boundary box.

·Selection only at the edge

·Two move functions: move all and move
individually

·Drawn object is now closer to the draw size
dimension instead of standardized dimension

·Can draw lorem ipsum text element

Lorem ipsum

You can create lorem ipsum by drawing three consecutive top-down
horizontal lines either within a shape or outside.You can also change the ipsum size using the font
size slider.Lorem ipsum is currently
represented by .ipsum. tag so you can override it with the actual text at later
time.

Saturday, 10 January 2015

Hope everyone have a happy new year!This is the first patch of the year 2015 and
it is focused on drawing sequence diagram.Personally, I think sequence diagram is the best UML notation to illustrate
communication between multiple systems.In the past, I haven’t found a tool that could create them with
ease.Well with the additional components
added to this patch the search is over.Here are what's added

Ability to change sequence diagram head with any
of the vector object from library

Add sequence activation and improve sequence
connector

Add sequence frame

Changing Sequence Head and Drawing Sequence Activation

You can change the sequence head by dragging any vector
shape from the library over the existing sequence head.To draw sequence activation, you need to draw
a thin box along the sequence timeline.The connector will automatically adjust itself when the activation is
detected.You can change the activation
property such as coloring and deleting with the normal gesture command.

These will be explained by the following slide:

Drawing Sequence Frame

You can draw a sequence frame by drawing a box around the
whole sequence or drawing a box that span more than one sequence timeline.Sequence Frame behaves like a boundary
box.

This shader program is simply for rendering any set of vertices with color and/or texture based on the "textureMask" variable. I dont know exactly what happened internally with the driver but when rendering different vertices as color or texture the driver throw a glerror 1285 which stand for "out of memory". However, I think the problem is because of the memory corruption when switching between texture and color.

Case 1) To render object as pure color, I just need to pass in just the position vertices while disable the texture vertices.

Case 2) To render object with texture, I need to pass in both the position and texture vertices.

What I think is that when switching from case 2 back to case 1. The driver may not recognize that the texture vertices should be disable and potentially reference to incorrect memory. This is my guess but it make the most sense.The solution:I have created two separate shaders for each purpose so there are no need for extra flag and optional parameter for the cases I described. By breaking them into two simple shader programs I am able to bypass the driver glitch.Lesson Learned:

Right now there seems to be problem running Drawexpress with the latest Android Lollipop on Nexus 10. The problem is related to opengl issues. I am not sure about the exact problem yet since I dont have the Nexus 10 device to test with yet. If you have a Nexus 10 please hold off on updating to Lollipop.

If you have other devices and are having the problem loading Drawexpress after Lollipop update please email me at support@drawexpress.com. I am also greatly appreciated if anyone with Nexus 10 who is willing to join my Android beta testing program.

Thursday, 23 October 2014

Hello, this is Peter Duong the author of DrawExpress.One user had reminded me that I haven’t
updated this blog for a while.At that
time, I was updating features here and there.However I felt that I wasn’t working on anything exciting to talk
about.You can follow my changes log to
get an idea of what have been done since.Anyways, the “Features and Roadmap” page is turning out to be close to
the changes log.Now, I think it is
better to discuss about some of the major pain points and design decisions instead.

So looking back at all the features added recently, I feel that
some of them aren’t solved properly yet.Although, it provides the added functionality, however it is still
lacking in the user experience aspect of DrawExpress.So I decided to take a step back to look at them
and come up with better a solution before moving forward. So for the next few
blogs I am opened to discussion and hopefully getting some insights from you.

Here is a list of things that I have in minds:

Color workflow

Line and curve

Custom Library

Project and file organization

File sharing and synchronization

For this post I am going to discuss about the color
workflow.Right now the coloring
workflow is a bit confusing between the gesture and the style menu.For those wanting a better visual diagram
this is an area that will need improvement both in the UX and the coloring
options.I am still in favor of leaving
in the gesture option but it will need to support the ability to change text
and stroke.Right now you can use
gestures for fill and the menu for text and stroke.

Also, the color palette and theme is really rigid and will
need to be customizable.I do not think
it is necessary to create an open ended color mixture every time you want to
change the color.However, an ability
to replace some of the default colors on the bar with your own favorite would
be better.I must admit that the default
colors set aren’t well thought out.

Please feel free to leave your feedback regarding to this
topic here or email me at support@drawexpress.com.I’ll
be updating this blog with more implementation details later.